calling.... "Never go anywhere.... Quite a recluse since my father's
death. He was Hilton Frean."

"Yes?" Mrs. Brailsford's eyes were sweetly interrogative.

"But as we are such near neighbors I felt that I must break my rule."

Mrs. Brailsford smiled in vague benevolence; yet as if she thought that
Miss Frean's feeling and her action were unnecessary. After seven years.
And presently Harriett found herself alone in her corner.

She tried to talk to Mr. Brailsford when he handed her the tea and bread
and butter. "My father," she said, "was connected with _The
Spectator_ for many years. He was Hilton Frean."

"Indeed? I'm afraid I--don't remember."

She could get nothing out of him, out of his lean, ironical face, his eyes
screwed up behind his glasses, benevolent, amused at her. She was nobody
in that roomful of keen, intellectual people; nobody; nothing but an
unnecessary little old lady who had come there uninvited.

Her second call was not returned. She heard that the Brailsfords were
exclusive; they wouldn't know anybody out of their own set. Harriett
explained her position thus: "No. I didn't keep it up. We have nothing in
common."

She was old--old. She had nothing in common with youth, nothing in common
with middle age, with intellectual, exclusive people connected with _The
Spectator_. She said, "_The Spectator_ is not what it used to be